Wednesday, March 15, 2017

Tropical Sour Patch Kids - Walmart

Tropical Sour Patch Kids - Walmart

Look out guys, they're are some new kids on the block! Sour Patch Kids came out with a new mix. Will it be just as good as the original version? Or is it a flop? We shall see!Let's talk packaging. We have a plastic bag with the recognizable Sour Patch Kids yellow in the background, a giant logo, some palm trees, scattered "kids" and a lovely contrasting blue shade around the outer edges. The color of the kids in this mix are reminiscent of a sunset, as seen in the smaller "tropical" logo in the bottom right corner, and if you look closely, the edges around that blue color are actually itty bitty Sour Patch Kid shapes. I like that the company takes every opportunity they have to wedge that recognizable kid-shape into their designs, and the complimentary color scheme is definitely eye catching, but the flavors in this bag seem a little...lazy.

When I turn it over you'll see what I'm talking about.

Passion Fruit? Okay. Tropical Twist? What does that even mean? Pineapple? Typical for all tropical mixes ever, and Paradise Punch? Looks like a Hawaiian punch knock off to me, and doesn't that contain pineapple? We already have a pineapple. I'm skeptical about this flavor line-up, but I've been wrong before...so let's check it out!

All of the flavors obviously have a sour sanding sugar coating, making them tart and tangy, so to review the four new flavors I tried to suck on (always so gross to type, but how else you you describe it?) each one until the sour coating was gone and review the chewy candy underneath.

Passion Fruit (purple) - It's been a while since I've had fresh passion fruit, but if memory serves, this is a pretty accurate re-creation. This one has some tangy notes reminiscent of pineapple, deeper more complex fruity notes, similar to pomegranate, and it's a little zesty, kind of like a blood orange. Definitely different from anything in the other Sour Patch Kid mixes.

Pineapple (white/translucent) - On it's own it lacks the authentic tang of real pineapple, but all the other notes are on-point. It reminds of of actual candied pineapple, and I like this one a lot.

Tropical Twist(orange) - Sweeter and far lest zesty
than the orange found in the original mix, but still very citrus-heavy.
This one has brighter clementine and tangerine notes mixed with...pineapple?
Again? Is everything in this mix just a variation of pineapple?

Paradise Punch(red) - Pretty much a generic version of Hawaiian punch. I can taste pineapple, possibly some lemon-lime, and maraschino cherry.

I love the original Sour Patch Kids mix, and even though it contains 3 different citrus fruits, the flavors are bold enough to maintain their individuality. Which is something this mix lacks. Each one of these flavors tastes like it has a variation of pineapple in it's base,
and that's boring for my palette.

To increase the variety while sticking with the tropical theme they could have added mango, jackfruit, lychee, or even a kid-shaped-version of the popular Sour Patch watermelon candies to switch things up and give you something drastically different to keep your palette interested. Instead they played is safe (and lazy) and added 2 "punch" style
fruity flavor mash-ups.

Of the four, I really liked the pineapple and the passion fruit, and would love to see them being added to the original Sour Patch Kids line-up to complete the rainbow and add even more variety, but there's just not enough of a difference between these four flavors to make me want to buy this mix again. On the other hand, if you really like pineapple, this is the mix you'd been waiting for.

The next mix, which will come out around March-June 2017, is Sour Patch Kids Tricksters, where the colors will be same as the original Sour Patch Kids just with the flavors swapped. They might throw in an extra color/flavor to make things harder, but we'll just have to wait and see